There’s More To Global Positioning Than Just GPS

May 7, 2026 by Tom Nardi 14 Comments

The Global Positioning System (GPS) was developed by the United States military in the 1970s, but it wasn’t long before civilians all over the planet started using it. By the early 2000s the technology was popping up in consumer devices such as mobile phones, and since then its become absolutely integral to our modern way of life.

But although support for GPS in our gadgets is nearly ubiquitous, it’s not the only option when it comes to figuring out where you are on the globe. As you might imagine, not everyone was thrilled with building their infrastructure around one of Uncle Sam’s pet projects, and so today there are several homegrown regional and global satellite navigation systems in operation.

As a follow-up to our recent dive into the ongoing GPS upgrades, let’s take a look at some of the other satellite positioning systems and who operates them.

Continue reading “There’s More To Global Positioning Than Just GPS” →

AI On Every Machine: The LLM You Probably Didn’t Want

May 6, 2026 by Jenny List 58 Comments

It’s been a story of the last week or so if you follow the kind of news channels a Hackaday scribe does, that Google have quietly installed an LLM as part of the Chrome browser. Reports vary as to when they did this because there’s a lot of confusion online with their online Gemini features also present in the browser, but it seems Chrome users are noticing its effect through slower performance and hefty disk access. Given that Chrome is by far the most popular web browser, this means that billions of users will have downloaded the four gigabyte Gemini Nano model, and now have an LLM they didn’t know about. It will be used to provide advanced auto-correct and other text suggestion features that their online version of Gemini would presumably be overburdened with, and since it’s available through a set of in-browser APIs we expect that it will find its way into a lot of websites, online applications, and plugins.

It’s caused a bit of a fuss in some circles, and we think, with some justification. When billions of computers unwittingly install an extremely energy intensive software component the effect on global power consumption will be significant, with a consequent uptick in the carbon footprint of computing. It’s not a phenomenon restricted to Chrome, as an example Siri has used a local LLM on Apple devices for a while now. We’ve seen rumblings of discontent and talk of getting European climate regulators involved, but perhaps instead it’s time to have a conversation about local AI models. The key is not whether or not they are a good thing to have, but when and how they operate.

While many of us are sick to death of AI slop and have not been lured into AI psychosis by an over-reinforcing chatbot, the fact remains that LLMs can do some useful things, they’re here to stay whether we like it or not, and having one under your control on your own computer doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Install Llama.cpp on your machine, and you’ve got an LLM of your very own, upon which your usage data isn’t going to be sold, and your content isn’t going to reinforce the finest plagiarism device the world has ever seen.

Opt-In and Opt-Out

The concerning development with the Chrome LLM is that not only has it been installed without the user’s consent, it runs without their consent too, and they can’t use it for anything except what Google Chrome wants it to be used for. Unlike the Llama.cpp mentioned above, it’s not under their control, instead it’s a compute-hungry monster ultimately controlled by Google. The prospect of a future in which multiple pieces of everyday software install their own similarly out-of-control multi-gigabyte CPU-munchers is a concerning one. Anyone who remembers Microsoft’s Clippy grabbing all the resources in a 1990s desktop as its stuttering animation played its course will know where this is going.

If local LLMs are an inevitability, what’s needed is a way to make them like any other application, one that the user chooses and installs themselves. Such an LLM could make its services available to applications such as a web browser if the user allows it to, but not run unless asked. It’s fairly obvious that installing Llama.cpp or similar is beyond many users, but it shouldn’t lie beyond the bounds of possibility to package something like it as an application they can install.

We know that the previous paragraph is pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking, and that as the person who knows computers in your family your next few Christmases will be spent wrestling with six different LLMs running on some elderly family member’s PC. But perhaps in Clippy lies the answer. If the consumer can learn to associate built-in AI features with their computer grinding to a halt just as they did with an office assistant thirty years ago, then perhaps they’ll demand change. We can hope.

How Giant Tanks Of Fluid Could Help Support The Power Grid

May 5, 2026 by Zoe Skyforest 53 Comments

If you’ve been paying any attention to the renewable energy space, you’ll know that generation isn’t really the problem anymore. Solar panels are cheap, and wind turbines are everywhere. The problem is matching generation with demand—sometimes there’s too much wind and sun, and sometimes there’s not enough. Ideally, you could store that energy somewhere, and deploy it when you need it.

The answer everyone keeps reaching for is lithium-ion batteries, and they work just fine. However, there’s a competing technology that’s been quietly scaling up in the background—the vanadium flow battery. It has some unique advantages that could see it rise to prominence in the world of large-scale grid storage.

Continue reading “How Giant Tanks Of Fluid Could Help Support The Power Grid” →

The GPS III Rollout Is Almost Complete, But What Is It?

April 28, 2026 by Tom Nardi 34 Comments

Considering how integral it is to our modern way of life, you could be excused for thinking that the Global Positioning System (GPS) is a product of the smartphone era. But the first satellites actually came online back in 1978, although the system didn’t reach full operational status until April of 1995. While none of the active GPS satellites currently in orbit are quite that old, several of them were launched in the early 2000s — and despite a few tweaks and upgrades, their core technology isn’t far removed from their 1990s era predecessors.

But in the coming years, that’s finally going to change. Just last week, the tenth GPS III satellite was placed in orbit by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Once it’s properly configured and operational, it will join its peers to form the first complete “block” of third-generation GPS satellites. Over the next decade, as many as 22 revised GPS III satellites are slated to take their position over the Earth, eventually replacing all of the aging satellites that billions of people currently rely on.

So what new capabilities do these third-generation GPS satellites offer, and why has it taken so long to implement needed upgrades in such a critical system?

Continue reading “The GPS III Rollout Is Almost Complete, But What Is It?” →

Trying Pair Programming With An LLM Chatbot

April 27, 2026 by Maya Posch 73 Comments

When it comes to software developers, there are a few distinct types. For example, the extroverted, chatty type, who is always going out there to share the latest and newest libraries and projects with everyone, and is very much into bouncing ideas off others, regardless of whether they know what you’re talking about. Then there is the introverted loner, who prefers to tackle programming challenges by bouncing things around inside their own minds and going on long walks to mull things over before committing to anything significant.

This leads to interesting scenarios when it comes to management-enforced ‘optimization’ strategies, like Pair Programming. This approach involves two developers sharing the same computer and keyboard, theoretically doubling the effective output by some kind of metric, but realistically often leading to at least one side feeling pretty miserable and disconnected unless you put two of the chatty types together.

As a certified introverted loner developer, the idea of using an LLM chatbot as a coding assistant naturally triggers unpleasant flashbacks to hours of forced awkward pair ‘programming’. However, maybe using an LLM chatbot could be more pleasant because you can skip the whole awkward socializing bit. In order to give it a shake, I put together a little experiment to see whether LLM-based coding assistants is something that I could come to appreciate, unlike pair programming.

Continue reading “Trying Pair Programming With An LLM Chatbot” →

AI For The Skeptics: Pick Your Reasons To Be Excited

April 8, 2026 by Jenny List 87 Comments

It’s odd being a technology writer in 2026, because around you are many people who will tell you that your craft is outdated. Like the manufacturers of buggy-whips at the turn of the twentieth century, the automobile (in the form of large language model AI) is on the market, and your business will soon be an anachronism. Adapt or go extinct, they tell you. It’s an argument I’ve found myself facing a few times over the last year in my wandering existence, and it’s forced me to think about it. What are the reasons everyone is excited about AI and are those reasons valid, what is there to be scared of, and what are the real reasons people should be excited about it?

If We Gotta Take This Seriously, How Can We Do It?

A couple in a horse drawn buggy, circa 1900ish — The futures looking bright in the buggy-whip department! Public domain.

I’ll start by repeating my tale from a few weeks ago when I asked readers what AI applications would survive when the hype is over. The reaction of a friend with decades of software experience on trying an AI coding helper stuck with me; she referenced her grandfather who had been born in rural America in the closing years of the nineteenth century, and recalled him describing the first time he saw an automobile. I agree with her that this has the potential to be a transformative technology, and while it’s entertaining to make fun of its shortcomings as I did three years ago when the idea of what we now call vibe coding first appeared, it’s already making itself useful in some applications. Simply dismissing it is no longer appropriate, but equally, drinking freely of the Kool-Aid seems like joining yet another hype bandwagon that will inevitably derail. A middle way has to be found. Continue reading “AI For The Skeptics: Pick Your Reasons To Be Excited” →

CCA Ethernet Cables: Not Up To Scratch, But Are They Dangerous?

April 7, 2026 by Zoe Skyforest 58 Comments

If you’ve ever bought a suspiciously cheap Ethernet cable from an online listing, there’s a decent chance you’ve encountered Copper Clad Aluminum. Better known as CCA, it’s exactly what it sounds like—an aluminium conductor with a thin skin of copper deposited on the outside. Externally, cables made with this material look largely like any other, with perhaps the only obvious tell being that they feel somewhat lighter in the hand.

CCA is cheaper than proper copper cabling, and it conducts signals well enough to function in an Ethernet cable. And yet, it’s a prime example of corner-cutting that keeps standards bodies and professional installers up at night. But just how dangerous is this silent scourge, found lurking in so many network cabinets around the world?

Not Up To Scratch

CCA wire is typically made by wrapping an aluminium core with copper strip and then extruding it through a die. Credit: USPTO

Everything you need to know about CCA is in the name—it refers to an aluminium wire with a thin copper cladding, typically applied through a die extrusion process. The reasoning behind this exploits a real physical phenomenon called the skin effect, wherein higher-frequency AC signals tend to travel along the outer surface of a conductor. The idea goes that since most of the current moves through the outer copper skin layer anyway, the less-conductive aluminium core doesn’t unduly impact the wire’s performance. Using copper-clad aluminium wiring is, in theory, desirable because aluminium is much cheaper than copper, which can really add up over long cable runs. Imagine you’re wiring a building with with hundreds of miles of Ethernet cabling, all with eight conductors each—the savings add up pretty quickly.

There’s a problem with CCA cabling in these contexts, though. Due to prevailing cabling standards, any cable made with CCA is technically not even a real Ethernet cable at all. The relevant documents are unambiguous.

ANSI/TIA-568.2-D requires conductors in Category-rated cable to be solid or stranded copper. No other materials are acceptable, and thus CCA is explicitly excluded from use in Category cable applications. A cable with CCA conductors cannot legitimately carry a Cat5e, Cat6, or any related designation under any circumstances. Similarly, ISO/IEC 11801 has the same requirement. The U.S. National Electrical Code also states that conductors in communications cables, other than coaxial cable, shall be copper. This isn’t a suggestion or a best practice; it’s the letter of the code. Anything lesser is simply not allowed. Continue reading “CCA Ethernet Cables: Not Up To Scratch, But Are They Dangerous?” →