Docker-Powered Remote Gaming With Games On Whales

July 13, 2024 by 15 Comments

Cloud gaming services allow even relatively meager devices like set top boxes and cheap Chromebooks play the latest and greatest titles. It’s not perfect of course — latency is the number one issue as the player’s controller inputs need to be sent out to the server —  but if you’ve got a fast enough connection it’s better than nothing. Interested in experimenting with the tech on your own terms? The open source Games on Whales project is here to make that a reality.

As you might have guessed from the name, Games on Whales uses Linux and Docker as core components in its remote gaming system. With the software installed on a headless server, multiple users can create virtual desktop environments on the same machine, with each spawning as a separate process on the host computer. This means that all of the hardware of the host can be shared without needing to do anything complicated like setting up GPU pass-through. The main Docker container can spin up more containers as needed.

Of course there will obviously be limits to what any given hardware configuration will be able to support in terms of number of concurrent users and the demands of each stream. But for someone who wants to host a server for their friends or something even simpler like not having to put a powerful gaming PC in the living room, this is a real game-changer. For those not up to speed on Docker yet, we recently featured a guide on getting started with this powerful tool since it does take some practice to wrap one’s mind around at first.

The NSA Is Defeated By A 1950s Tape Recorder. Can You Help Them?

July 13, 2024 by 59 Comments

One of the towering figures in the evolution of computer science was Grace Hopper, an American mathematician, academic, and Naval reservist, whose work gave us the first programming languages, compilers, and much more. Sadly she passed away in 1992, so her wisdom hasn’t directly informed the Internet Age in the manner of some of her surviving contemporaries.

During her life she gave many lectures though, and as [Michael Ravnitzky] discovered, one of them was recorded on video tape and resides in the archives of America’s National Security Agency. With the title “Future Possibilities: Data, Hardware, Software, and People”, it was the subject of a Freedom Of Information request. This in turn was denied, on the grounds that “Without being able to view the tapes, NSA has no way to verify their responsiveness”. In short, the recording lies on Ampex 1″ reel-to-reel video tape, which the NSA claims no longer to be able to read.

It’s fairly obvious from that response that the agency has no desire to oblige, and we’d be very surprised to find that they keep a working Ampex video system to hand on the off-chance that a passing researcher might ask for an archive tape. But at the same time it’s also obvious that a lecture from Rear Admiral Hopper is an artifact of international importance that should be preserved and available for study. It’s an interesting thought exercise to guess how many phone calls Hackaday would have to make to secure access to a working Ampex video recorder, and since we think for us that number would be surprisingly low it’s likely the NSA know exactly who to call if they needed that tape viewed in a hurry. We don’t have influence over secretive government agencies, but if we did we’d be calling shame on them at this point.

If you’re curious about Grace Hopper, we’ve talked about her work here in the past.

Thanks [F4GRX] for the tip.

Ampex image: Telecineguy., Public domain.

It’s Not Unusual To Love Hacking

July 13, 2024 by 22 Comments

Most of what we do here at Hackaday is look out for cool projects and then write them up so that you all know about them. Nothing is better than being really stoked about a clever hack and then being able to share it with tens of thousands of like-minded folks. Sure, it’s our job, but we really do it because we love to share. And it’s clear that you all do too! After all, we write up the hacks that you document for us.

We recently featured a hack where the guy who did the work in question said that he didn’t think it was “worthy of Hackaday”. (Of course, it was!) And I don’t like that sentiment at all, honestly, because a hack that you enjoyed doing is a hack worth sharing, even if just for sharing the joy of doing it, and that came across fully.

Of course we gladly feature the ultra-bravado hacks where the nearly impossible is made real. But there’s equal value in the simple hacks that inspire others to pursue one odd path or another. Or even pieces where there’s no hack involved, but simply the sharing of something cool.

This week, [Arya Voronova] wrote a piece about her experience using MicroPython on embedded devices, and it apparently resonated with a lot of our readers. It’s not a deep-dive into MicroPython, or a mind-bending abuse of the language. Instead, it’s a simple “this is what I love about doing things this way”, and that’s a great perspective that often gets lost when we get deep in the technical weeds.

I had the same realization a few months back at Hackaday Europe. In the lightning talks, most everyone gave talks about cool projects that they are working on, and they’re absolutely worth watching for that. [Jaap Meijers] gave a wonderful talk about making animated QR codes, but it wasn’t about how he invented animated QR codes, because he was just using someone else’s project. Instead, it was about how neat he thought someone else’s work was, and how he really wanted to share it with us. (And now you know too.)

Epic hacks are fantastic, no question. But the simple expression of the love of hacking, whether in words or in the doing, is equally important. Show us your work, but don’t forget to show us your joy along the way.

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Particle Physics On A Small, Affordable PCB

July 13, 2024 by 7 Comments

Experimenting in the world of particle physics probably brings to mind large, expensive pieces of equipment like particle accelerators, or at least exotic elements or isotopes that most of us can’t easily find. But plenty of common objects emit various particles, and it turns out that detecting these particles does not require government backing or acres of test equipment. In fact, you can get this job done with a few readily-available parts and [Tim] shows us how it’s done with his latest project.

The goal of his build is to have a working particle detector for less than $10 per board, although he’s making them in bulk to be used in an educational setting. The board uses a set of photodiodes enclosed in a protective PCB sandwich to detect beta particles from a Potassium-40 source. The high-energy electron interacts with the semiconductor in the photodiode and creates a measurable voltage pulse, which can be detected and recorded by the microcontroller on the board. For this build an RP2040 chip is being used, with a number of layers of amplification between it and the photodetector array used to get signals that the microcontroller can read.

Getting particle physics equipment into the hands of citizen scientists is becoming a lot more common thanks to builds like this which leverage the quirks of semiconductors to do something slightly outside their normal use case, and of course the people building them releasing their projects’ documentation on GitHub. We’ve also seen an interesting muon detector with a price tag of around $100 and an alpha particle detector which uses a copper wire with a high voltage to do its work.

Rulers Of The Ancient World — Literally!

July 13, 2024 by 29 Comments

If you were expecting a post about ancient kings and queens, you are probably at the wrong website. [Burn Heart] has a fascination with ancient measuring devices and set out to recreate period-correct rules, although using decidedly modern techniques.

The first example is a French rule for measuring the “pied du Roi” or king’s foot. Apparently, his royal highness had large feet as a the French variant is nearly 13 inches long. The next rulers hail from Egypt and measure cubits and spans. Turns out the pyramid builders left a lot of information about measurements and their understanding of math and tools like dividers.

Other rules from Rome, Japan, and the Indus Valley are also included. According to the post, one set of these rulers used locally sourced wood, but a second “limited” edition used wood that the originals might have. Most of the rulers were etched via CNC, although the French ruler was hand-etched.

The Romans, apparently, had smaller feet than French royalty, as their Pes or foot was about 11.65 inches. There are plenty of little tidbits in the post ranging from the origin of the word inch to why the black wood used for piano keys is called ebony.

We’ll stipulate this isn’t exactly a hack, although it is fine workmanship and part of hacker culture is obsessing over measuring things, so we thought it was fair game. These days, rulers are often electronic. Which makes it natural to put them on a PC board.

A Teeny 3D-Printed Printing Press, Thanks Gutenberg

July 12, 2024 by 18 Comments

The printing press was first invented in 1440 AD by Johannes Gutenberg. It’s not so relevant to our day to day lives today, but it’s a technology that forever changed the path of human history. Now you can whip one up yourself using this teeny design from the [3DPrintingEnthusiast]!

Don’t expect to be making broadsheets with this thing—it’s a strictly table-top sized unit made on a 3D printer. Still, it does the job! The bed, frame, paper holder, and clamps are all 3D-printed. However, you will need some minor additional supplies to complete the carriage and inkballs.

As for your printing plates, you could go out and source some ancient lead type—or you could just 3D print some instead. The latter is probably easier if you’re living in 2024 like yours truly. Who knows, though. 2028 could be a banner year where printing presses roar back to prominence. Try not to think about the global scale disasters that would make that a reality.

In any case, there’s got to be some kind of irony about 3D-printing a printing press on a 3D printer? Perhaps, perhaps not. Debate it below!

Amputation and wound care behavior in C. floridanus (A) Illustration of a worker providing wound care on a femur-injured individual. (B) A worker amputating (biting) the injured leg at the trochanter. (C) A worker providing wound care on the newly created trochanter wound after amputation. (D) Percentage of amputations performed on ants with an infected or sterile femur (red) or tibia (blue) injury after 24 h. Numbers above the bars represent the sample size for each treatment. (E) Percentage of time the injured ant received wound care behavior over 3 h, binned in 10 min intervals, with a local polynomial regression (loess) showing a 95% confidence interval for the first 3 h after the experimental femur injury (femur, red: n = 8) and the first 3 h after amputation on the trochanter wound (trochanter, brown: n = 7).

Surgery — Not Just For Humans Anymore

July 12, 2024 by 21 Comments

Sometimes, a limb is damaged so badly that the only way to save the patient is to amputate it. Researchers have now found that humans aren’t the only species to perform life-saving amputations. [via Live Science]

While some ants have a gland that secretes antimicrobial chemicals to treat wounds in their comrades, Florida carpenter ants have lost this ability over the course of evolution. Lacking this chemical means to treat wounds, these ants have developed the first observed surgery in an animal other than humans.

When an ant has a wounded leg, its fellow ants analyze the damage. If the femur is the site of the wound, the other ants removed the damaged limb in 76% of cases by biting it off, while tibial wounds were treated in other ways. Experimental amputations of the tibia by researchers showed no difference in survivability compared to leaving the limb intact unless the amputation was performed immediately, so it seems the ants know what they’re doing.

Maybe these ants could be helpful surgical aids with some cyborg additions since they’ve already got experience? Ants can help you with programming too if that’s more your speed.

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