A baby blue hatchback with red accents drives down a road with blurry trees and a blue sky in the background.

Hyundai Paywalls Brake Pad Changes

November 15, 2025 by Navarre Bartz 93 Comments

Changing the pads on your car’s brakes is a pretty straightforward and inexpensive process on most vehicles. However, many modern vehicles having electronic parking brakes giving manufacturers a new avenue to paywall simple DIY repairs.

Most EVs will rarely, if ever, need to replace their mechanical brake pads as in most driving situations the car will be predominantly relying on regenerative braking to slow down. A hot hatch like the Ioniq 5N, however, might go through brakes a lot faster if it spends a lot of time at the track, which is what happened with Reddit user [SoultronicPear].

Much to their chagrin, despite buying the required $60/wk subscription to the National Automotive Service Task Force (NASTF) and the $2,000 interface tool, [SoultronicPear]’s account was suspended because it was not intended for use for anyone but “service professionals.” Not exactly a Right-to-Repair friendly move on Hyundai’s part. After trying a number of different third party tools, they finally found a Harbor Freight T7 bidirectional scan tool was able to issue the parking brake retract command to perform the pad swap, albeit not without throwing some error codes in the process.

Electrification of vehicles should simplify repairs, but manufacturers are using it to do the opposite. Perhaps they should read our Minimal Motoring Manifesto? There is a glimmer of hope in the promises of Slate and Telo, but we’ll have to see if they make it to production first.

Android Developer Verification Starts As Google Partially Retreats On Measures

November 14, 2025 by Maya Posch 35 Comments

In a recent blog post Google announced that the early access phase of its Android Developer Verification program has commenced, as previously announced. In addition to this new announcement Google also claims to be taking note of the feedback it has been receiving, in particular pertaining to non-commercial developers for whom these new measures are incredibly inconvenient. Yet most notable is the ’empowering experienced users’ section, where Google admits that to developers and ‘power users’ the intensive handholding isn’t required and it’ll develop an ‘advanced flow’ where unverified apps can still be installed without jumping through (adb) hoops. Continue reading “Android Developer Verification Starts As Google Partially Retreats On Measures” →

If IRobot Falls, Hackers Are Ready To Wrangle Roombas

November 13, 2025 by Tom Nardi 44 Comments

Things are not looking good for iRobot. Although their robotic Roomba vacuums are basically a household name, the company has been faltering financially for some time now. In 2024 there was hope of a buyout by Amazon, who were presumably keen to pull the bots into their Alexa ecosystem, but that has since fallen through. Now, by the company’s own estimates, bankruptcy is a very real possibility by the end of the year.

Hackaday isn’t a financial blog, so we won’t get into how and why iRobot has ended up here, although we can guess that intense competition in the market probably had something to do with it. We’re far more interested in what happens when those millions of domesticated robots start getting an error message when they try to call home to the mothership.

We’ve seen this scenario play out many times before — a startup goes belly up, and all the sudden you can’t upload new songs to some weirdo kid’s media player, or the gadget in your fridge stops telling you how old your eggs are. (No, seriously.) But the scale here is unprecedented. If iRobot collapses, we may be looking at one of the largest and most impactful smart-gadget screw overs of all time.

Luckily, we aren’t quite there yet. There’s still time to weigh options, and critically, perform the kind of research and reverse engineering necessary to make sure the community can keep the world’s Roombas chugging along even if the worst happens.

Continue reading “If IRobot Falls, Hackers Are Ready To Wrangle Roombas” →

Radio Apocalypse: Survivable Low-Frequency Communication System

November 12, 2025 by Dan Maloney 17 Comments

In the global game of nuclear brinksmanship, secrets are the coin of the realm. This was especially true during the Cold War, when each side fielded armies of spies to ferret out what the other guy was up to, what their capabilities were, and how they planned to put them into action should the time come. Vast amounts of blood and treasure were expended, and as distasteful as the whole thing may be, at least it kept armageddon at bay.

But secrets sometimes work at cross-purposes to one’s goals, especially when one of those goals is deterrence. The whole idea behind mutually assured destruction, or MAD, was the certain knowledge that swift retaliation would follow any attempt at a nuclear first strike. That meant each side had to have confidence in the deadliness of the other’s capabilities, not only in terms of their warheads and their delivery platforms, but also in the systems that controlled and directed their use. One tiny gap in the systems used to transmit launch orders could spell the difference between atomic annihilation and at least the semblance of peace.

During the height of the Cold War, the aptly named Survivable Low-Frequency Communication System was a key part of the United States’ nuclear deterrence. Along with GWEN, HFGCS, and ERCS, SLFCS was part of the alphabet soup of radio systems designed to make sure the bombs got dropped, one way or another.

Continue reading “Radio Apocalypse: Survivable Low-Frequency Communication System” →

OldVersion.com Archive Facing Shutdown Due To Financing Issues

November 7, 2025 by Maya Posch 26 Comments

Finding older versions of particular software can be a real chore, all too often only made possible by the sheer grace and benevolence of their creators. At the same time older versions of software can be the only way to dodge undesirable ‘upgrades’, track down regressions, do historical research, set up a retro computer system, and so on. This is where an archive like OldVersion.com (HTTP only so your browser may shout at you) is incredibly useful, offering thousands of installers for software covering a number of platforms.

Unfortunately, as noted on the website, they recently lost their main source of income in the form of Google advertising. This means that after launching in 2001, this archive may soon have to be shut down before long. Confusingly, trying to visit the blog throws a HTTP 503 error, and visiting the forum currently forces a redirect to a random news site unless you can mash that Esc button really fast, perhaps as alternative advertising partners are being trialed, or due to a hack.

Although these days we have sites like Archive.org to do more large scale archiving, OldVersion.com is special for being focused and well-organized, along with a long and rich history that would be a shame to lose. We have referenced the site in the past for old versions as far back as 2008. Hopefully we’ll soon find out more about what is going on with the archive and what its future will be.

Thanks to [Philip Perry] for the tip.

Make Metal Rain With Thermal Spraying

November 6, 2025 by Ian Bos 16 Comments

For those of us hackers who have gone down a machining rabbit hole, we all know how annoying it can be to over-machine a part. Thermal spraying, while sounding sci-fi, is a method where you can just spray that metal back on your workpiece. If you don’t care about machining, how about a gun that shoots a shower of sparks just to coat your enemies in a layer of metal? Welcome to the world of thermal spraying, led by the one and only [Alec Steele].

There are three main techniques shown that can be used to coat using metal spools. The first, termed flame spraying, uses a propane flame and compressed air to blast fine drops of molten metal onto your surface. A fuel-heavy mixture allows the metal to remain unoxidized and protect any surface beneath. Perhaps one of the most fun to use is the arc method of thermal spray. Two wires feed together to short a high current circuit; all it takes from there is a little pressured air to create a shower of molten metal. This leaves the last method similar to the first, but uses a powder material rather than the wires used in flame spraying.

As with much crazy tech, the main uses of thermal spraying are somewhat mundane. Coating is applied to prevent oxidation, add material to be re-machined, or improve the mechanical resistance of a part. As expensive as this tech is, we would love to see someone attempt an open-source version to allow all of us at Hackaday to play with. Can’t call it too crazy when we have people making their own X-ray machines.

Continue reading “Make Metal Rain With Thermal Spraying” →