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.
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.
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?
The futures looking bright in the buggy-whip department! Public domain.
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?”→
If you know much about radios and espionage, you’ve probably encountered number stations. These are mysterious stations that read out groups of numbers or otherwise encoded messages to… well… someone. Most of the time, we don’t know who is receiving the messages. You’d be excused for thinking that this is an old technology. After all, satellite phones, the Internet, and a plethora of options now exist to allow the home base to send spies secret instructions. However, the current-day global conflict has seen at least one new number station appear, apparently associated with the United States and, presumably, targeting some recipients in Iran, according to priyom.org.
As you might expect, these stations don’t identify themselves, but the Enigma Control List names this one as V32. It broadcasts two two-hour blocks a day at 0200 UTC and a repeat at 1800 UTC. Each message starts with the Farsi word for “attention” followed by what is assumed to be some header information as two 5-digit groups. Then there is a set of 181 five-digit groups. Each message is padded out to take 20 minutes, and there are six messages in each transmission.
With the launch of Artemis II from Cape Canaveral potentially just weeks away, NASA has been releasing a steady stream of information about the mission through their official site and social media channels to get the public excited about the agency’s long-awaited return to the Moon. While the slickly produced videos and artist renderings might get the most attention, even the most mundane details about a flight that will put humans on the far side of our nearest celestial neighbor for the first time since 1972 can be fascinating.
The Artemis II Moon Mission Daily Agenda is a perfect example. Released earlier this week via the NASA blog, the document seems to have been all but ignored by the mainstream media. But the day-by-day breakdown of the Artemis II mission contains several interesting entries about what the four crew members will be working on during the ten day flight.
Of course, the exact details of the agenda are subject to change once the mission is underway. Some tasks could run longer than anticipated, experiments may not go as planned, and there’s no way to predict technical issues that may arise.
Conversely, the crew could end up breezing through some of the planned activities, freeing up time in the schedule. There’s simply no way of telling until it’s actually happening.
With the understanding that it’s all somewhat tentative, a look through the plan as it stands right now can give us an idea of the sort of highlights we can expect as we follow this historic mission down here on Earth.
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.
