The Garmin HUD+ was a small Bluetooth device intended for the dashboard of a car, meant to be used as a GPS heads-up display for data from Garmin smartphone apps. It used a bright VFD (vacuum fluorescent display) which was viewed through a clear reflector, and displayed GPS information and directions. It was discontinued in 2015, but [Doz] was fond of his and used it happily until a phone upgrade meant it no longer worked. Was it destined for a landfill? Not if he had anything to say about it!
The first thing [Doz] tried was using an alternate Android app, but since it also didn’t work, it was time to sit back and reflect on the scope of the issue. In [Doz]’s case, he really only wanted some basic meaningful data displayed, and decided he could do away with the phone altogether if he had the right hardware. Continue reading “Garmin HUD Got Discontinued, But Not Trashed”→
When in need of any tool to get a job done quickly, or only for a small number of times, it’s great to have a local “discount tool” company locally for some working, yet often low-quality solution to whatever problem might arise. While there are some gems, most of these tools won’t last through heavy, sustained use like their more expensive counterparts will. On the other hand, there are other things to be had at these discount shops, such as inspiration for tackling a storage problem.
This particular storage system comes from Harbor Freight, and uses a set linked crosshairs, the center of which is hollowed out. A set of movable compartments sits on top with feet that can interlock inside the crosshairs. This allows much more efficient use of space within the toolboxes, but [Alan] wanted it to be useful for more that that. He designed and implemented the Storage Case Base Template (SCBT) which allows for a container of any size to be fitted with a similar crosshair network.
With this non-proprietary system implemented and printed, the original goal of reducing the clutter in [Alan]’s workspace was accomplished. The 3D printing files can be modified easily for any space, and are available both on Thingiverse and Printables. For some other ways of packing a lot into a small space, we featured this tiny workshop a while back that’s packed with storage hacks.
[Gregor Herz] caught wind of a problem that neuropediatric clinics in Germany have been facing recently. Orfiril, a seizure-preventing medication used in those clinics for treating children, is normally prescribed to adults, and the usual dosages are too high for kids. Orfiril comes in regular pill-shaped capsules, each capsule containing a bunch of small medication-soaked pellets, and you only need a certain amount of these pellets if you want to achieve a lower dose.
It used to be that you could get a special spoon helping you to get a proper dosage — but sadly, the original supplier has quit making these. So, our hacker designed a 3D printable model instead.
[Gregor] tells us that a lot of clinics in Germany are facing this exact issue right now, so sharing this model may mean that more hospitals can work around the supply issue. Provided a friendly hobbyist has food-grade 3D printing conditions available, anyway. He tells about some suitable filaments models you can buy, as well as research on food-grade printing requirements — a topic we’ve talked about in detail, and just this month have seen someone revisit with reassuring results. Are you interested in printing some of these? If so, there might be a clinic nearby that’d be thankful.
Not all hacking happens on hardware — every now and then, we ought to hack our software-based tools, too. [Ducko] tells us about a partially open-source rewrite of Discord’s Electron-based frontend. Web apps can be hard to tinker with, which is why such projects are to be appreciated. Now, this isn’t a reverse-engineering of Discord’s API or an alternative client per se, but it does offer a hopeful perspective on what the Discord client ought to do for us.
First of all, the client loads noticeably faster, not unlike the famous GTA Online speedup (which was also a user-driven improvement), with channel and server switching made less laggy — and the Linux updater was de-cruft-ified as well. [Ducko] tells us how she got rid of the numerous NPM dependencies of the original code – it turned out that most of the dependencies could be easily replaced with Node.JS native APIs or Linux binaries like unzip. Apart from much-appreciated performance improvements, there are also options like telemetry bypass, and customization mechanisms for your own theming. You won’t get Discord on your Apple ][ just yet, but the native client will be a bit friendlier towards you.
Research activity into 3D printing never seems to end, with an almost constant stream of new techniques and improvements upon old ones hitting the news practically daily. This time, the focus is on a technique we’ve not covered so much, namely binder jetting additive manufacturing (BJAM for short, catchy huh?) Specifically the team from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, who have been exploring the use of so-called hyperbranched Polyethyleneimine (PEI) as a binder for jetting onto plain old foundry silica sand (nature, free access.)
Roll, spray, bake. Simples.
The PEI binder was mixed with a 75:25 mix of water and 1-propanol (not to be mixed up with 2-propanol aka isopropanol) to get the correct viscosity for jetting with a piezoelectric print head and the correct surface tension to allow adequate powder bed penetration, giving optimal binding efficiency. The team reported a two-fold increase in strength over previous jetting techniques, however, the real news is what they did next; by infusing the printed part (known as the green part) with common old ethyl cyanoacrylate (ECA, or super glue to us) the structural strength of the print increased a further eight times due to the reaction between the binder and the ECA infiltrate.
To further bestow the virtues of the PEI binder/ECA mix, it turns out to be water-soluble, at least for a couple of days, so can be used to make complex form washout tooling — internal supports that can be washed away. After a few days, the curing process is complete, resulting in a structure that is reportedly stronger than concrete. Reinforce this with carbon fiber, and boy do you have a tough building material!
Not bad for some pretty common materials and a simple printing process.
With just a few days to go before the kickoff of the 2021 Hackaday Remoticon, we’re still working furiously behind the scenes to pack as much content as possible into the two day virtual event. In fact, there’s so much going on that we thought you’d appreciate getting a bit of a head start as far as planning your own personal course through the weekend goes. The event might be free, but that’s no reason not to squeeze as much out of it as you can.
Chat It Up on Discord
To begin with, you’re really going to want to join the official Hackaday Remoticon Discord server. We know some subset of the Hackaday readership would rather we used Matrix, or IRC, or maybe carefully modulated smoke signals; but at the end of the day, Discord has bubbled to the top as the defacto choice for this kind of thing. Give it a shot, you might actually like it.
The Discord server isn’t just a place for like-minded hackers to hang out and discuss the musical stylings of DJ Jackalope during the Saturday afterparty. It’s also how attendees can ask questions at the end of each presenter’s talk, as we’ll be turning off YouTube chat to keep things centralized. Even if you don’t plan on communicating with others (though you really should), the Discord server has an interactive schedule of events which will let you sign up to be notified when the talks you’ve selected are about to start, and we’ll be dropping important announcements and links in there as the event goes on.
Friday Bring-a-Hack on Gather Town
Like this, but with soldering irons.
Friday night ends with a Bring-a-Hack where attendees can show off whatever they’ve been working on using Gather. It’s a video chat platform inside a virtual 2D world that looks a bit like Legend of Zelda.
Using this virtual environment, you can easily drop into an ongoing video stream simply by walking up to the presenter. Once you’ve seen enough, just walk over to the next little cluster of users. The point is to recreate the experience of stopping by a crowded after party where everyone brought some hardware project along with them to get spark conversations. Space will be limited, with ticket holders and people in Discord getting the first dibs, so keep an eye on your inbox for information about how to join.
Of course this is not the only Friday evening activity. A few weeks ago we announced that Lewin Day will be hosting Hacker Trivia, giving our beloved commenters the chance to show off your unimpeachable knowledge of technology and Hackaday history. The Friday talk stream will dump immediately into trivia, but here’s the dedicated link if you want to set a reminder for yourself.
Try It, You’ll Like It!
It’s difficult, perhaps even impossible, to truly recreate the experience of going to an in-person hacker con. But with interactive events and the latest and greatest communication software, we’re hoping the 2021 Remoticon can get pretty close. All the pieces are in place, the only thing we need now is to have a whole bunch of excited hackers to join in and have a good time. Think you can help us out?
We talk about ransomware gangs quite a bit, but there’s another shadowy, loose collection of actors in that arena. Emsisoft sheds a bit of light on the network of researchers and law enforcement that are working behind the scenes to frustrate ransomware campaigns.
Darkside is an interesting case study. This is the group that made worldwide headlines by hitting the Colonial Pipeline, shutting it down for six days. What you might not realize is that the Darkside ransomware software had a weakness in its encryption algorithms, from mid December 2020 through January 12, 2021. Interestingly, Bitdefender released a decryptor on January 11. I haven’t found confirmation, but the timing seems to indicate that the release of the decryptor triggered Darkside to look for and fix the flaw in their encryption. (Alternatively, it’s possible that it was released in response the fix, and time zones are skewing the dates.)
Emsisoft is very careful not to tip their hand when they’ve found a vulnerability in a ransomware. Instead, they have a network of law enforcement and security professionals that they share information with. This came in handy again when the Darkside group was spun back up, under the name BlackMatter.
Not long after the campaign was started again, a similar vulnerability was reintroduced in the encryption code. The ransomware’s hidden site, used for negotiating payment for decryption, seems to have had a vulnerability that Emsisoft was able to use to keep track of victims. Since they had a working decryptor, they were able to reach out directly, and provide victims with decryption tools.
This changed when the link to BlackMatter’s portal leaked on Twitter. It seems like many people hold ransomware gangs in less-than-high regard, and took the opportunity to inform BlackMatter of this fact, using that portal. In response, BlackMatter took down that portal site, cutting off Emsisoft’s line of information. Since then, the encryption vulnerability has been fixed, Emisoft can’t listen in on BlackMatter anymore, and they released the story to encourage BlackMatter victims to contact them. They also suggest that ransomware victims always contact law enforcement to report the incident, as there may be a decryptor that isn’t public yet. Continue reading “This Week In Security: The Battle Against Ransomware, Unicode, Discourse, And Shrootless”→
